Jericho actor Brad Beyer (aka Stanley Richmond) had an interesting conversation with OnMilwaukee.com:
The biggest problem with our show is that so many people were watching it on the Internet or Tivo (which doesn’t count toward Neilson ratings), so I think the fans are now aware to watch it when it’s on.
Doh! I thought this was some rogue comment in the saving of Jericho, but after reading more from CBS execs (on Brent Evans & PVRWire) it’s clear they blame DVR usage and plead:
Please watch “Jerichoâ€? on broadcast television.
While I’m pleased to see the show renewed for at least 7 more episodes, I think CBS is a bit misguided on this point. If they need a larger audience, they can help themselves by not scheduling directly opposite American Idol and taking a 2+ month mid-season hiatus. Prior to the nutiness, I would have also suggested advertising – but they’ve gotten a ton… 25 tons to be exact. And it wouldn’t hurt to figure out how to track time-shifted viewing. DVRs aren’t going away. Quite the opposite: Their penetration and usage will continue to increase.
I couldn’t agree with you more Dave. This is another example of the networks struggling to figure out how to deal with time-shifting tv. I think they are beginning to figure it out – but blaming DVR’s for the shows problem is a stretch. The real problem is the way they have measured viewership in the past.
You are so right. CBS should count all viewers. I hope folks will sign this petition which says so:
http://www.petitiononline.com/62951S/petition.html
I am sorry but to me this show was terrible. The premise is great and suspenseful but the acting and stories were bad. I watched the first 5 or so episodes.
Therefore, I find it weird that you all are going nuts over the cancellation/renewal.
Why should they count the DVR viewers for ratings? The ratings are used to sell advertising and the DVR users skip the ads….
As several studies implied, not all DVR users skip all ads. Additionally, they sell product placements – which are obviously not skipped.
Hey, a post from Dave that’s actually from Dave! I can tell by the good grammar. :-) Yeah, the studios really need to pay attention to other factors besides the Nielsens. Asking viewers who watch online, or timeshifted, to flip on the tube at 8pm on Wednesday (or whenever) isn’t going to help. The people with Nielsen books know that what they’re doing is being watched, and the people without won’t make the least bit of difference. At least people watching online or on a TiVo can be counted! If the studio wants to bother.
I’m of the opinion that things shoudl be pushed all the way.. I think tv as we know it shoudl go away and everything be on-demand and people can watch what the want.
Shows can be programmed to not allow for fast forwarding through commercials.
Unfortunately the real question is how much say does the network have in this. If Madison Avenue won’t accept dvr usuage in determining their ad buys on network television, CBS has no choice but to ignore them on one level. They, and other networks, can continue to fight the public battle in order to win the private war, which is what I think we are seeing now, but beyond that they are hamstrung. Advertising is what pays the bills and makes the profits.
The real question is how do we get Madison Avenue to 1.) accept the new media revolution and 2.) stop using outdated ideas about who and what people are watching and their relationship with advertising.
Rob, on all the DVRs I’ve owned (DirecTiVo, Moto 6412, Series2 and Series3 TiVos) I do not skip ads that I find interesting. I will even back up and watch an ad or a movie trailer if I’m interested.
Plus, a DVR viewer has to pay attention to the commercials to see when they end and the show resumes. I would argue they pay more attention to those commercials than 90% of the people who don’t watch TV with a DVR.
So, the advertisers may not believe it, but I know who is advertising on the shows that I watch.
The main thing for me is that I watch very little network TV in terms of series. “The Office” is it (sorry, “Jericho” didn’t do it for me). Everything else is on cable (and on basic, even – I don’t watch any of the shows on the premium channels).
So, yes, while my viewing habits in the past decade or so have skewed towards non-network TV, I’m still watching commercial TV, and paying attention.
The people the networks and cable outlets are losing are the folks who download episodes from Usenet and BitTorrent or even iTunes. I know people in my office who just don’t watch TV – they download what they’re interested in, and most of those shows have had their commercials removed.
As an employee of Nielsen, (spelled incorrectly in the quote) I have to inform you that we DO meter homes with DVRs (TiVO), and those shows watched later DO appear in the ratings. The problem they are having is with online episodes (cbs.com, iTunes). People that watch on these mediums are not accounted for in the ratings, something that we hope to accomplish very soon.
Our watching Jericho while it’s on TV will not help with the Nielsen’s which is a small demographic of the true viewers of all shows. On Demand, TiVo, Innertube, IPod, they are here for a reason. Consumers want to watch programming but have 24/7 lives. I do not FF commercials On Demand or Innertube. We are the customers and will be counted or networks will lose their customers.
It may or may not make sense to count online viewers, legal or otherwise, in the ratings for a show. They may see different ads, no ads, and so on, but they aren’t watching the same *broadcast* as those watching live or watching on a DVR, so it’s hard to argue to non-product-placement advertisers that those viewers matter when they price ads for that broadcast.
The problem the Neilsen’s try to solve is what to charge advertisers for slots during a show (by providing an assortment of metrics.) DVRs are a little change to that mix, but it’s still the same chunk of time being watched, just not in real-time. People who watch through other means might matter to other varieties of advertiser, but the real issue is that there’s no one rating any more that covers all the ways people watch.
You can say the same thing about actually airing the show-if no one watches the traditional broadcast, just the online version, it doesn’t make sense to broadcast it traditionally. It wouldn’t make sense to count the online viewers when making that decision (although it would make sense to count some or all of the DVR viewers.) Now, if you’ve got enough online viewers, that could mean a show produced exclusively for online distribution. I don’t know that the viewership is there (yet) to support an online-only show with the expenses of even cheap network programming.
Sorry networks, 100% of my TV viewing is via TiVo. I won’t watch a show live even if it is one of my favorites, even if that means it gets canceled. It just is not worth it to me – time-shifting is more important than saving any show. And I feel that by caving in and watching live it just prolongs an out-dated business model that needs to die anyway. If some shows need to be sacrificed in the process, such is the price of progress.
One of the biggest problems is not necessarily the fact that people use DVRs or the Internet to watch network programming. I have been researching the ratings issue and found that the main problem with the Nielson ratings is that their sample is not a truly random sample. Unfortunately, the end group of people that have boxes placed in their home are not reflective of the entire U.S. population. It is only truly representative of a certain type of person.
This causes skewed data because the type of people that usually accept the boxes into their homes tend to watch certain types of shows. The end result is that shows such as Jericho suffer because the data does not capture the type of viewer that tends to watch such shows.
The networks have only themselves to blame for an outdated business model that relies too heavily on an outdated measurement tool. Audiences started time shifting over 25 years ago when VCRs became widely available. The major entertainment companies cry and blame others because they do not know how to compete with the myriad entertainment options offered through the internet. Do I still need NBC, Viacom, Time Warner, etc. to be entertained? Uh, no…
“I wonÂ’t watch a show live even if it is one of my favorites, even if that means it gets canceled. It just is not worth it to me”
I concur. I also won’t send peanuts to studios.
Like most things in life, new technology has been a problem and a blessing for the networks. They just have to learn to handle it and manage it without cancelling good shows and programming “Kid Nation”‘s all the time.
While it is not a “traditional” avenue, part of what can be tracked are DVD sales. Movies have started actually banking on the domestic and foreigh DVD sales as an expected revenue source. Shows like Jericho are made for that format; much like 24 and Lost.
I’m not sure how much the advertisers pay, but there is advertising on the CBS Innertube; 15 or 30 second clips that break just as the show normally broke on television. Maybe not every slot sold, but enough that you have commercial breaks and like those with TIVO’s, when I am watching… even if it’s an episode I’ve seen… I just watch that little commercial rather than try to bump forward.
Most people learned long ago that it’s just not worth the effort to skip the commercials. You end up over or under estimating when to stop… and usually have to rescroll to pick up the part of the episode you missed.
I’m not sure if CBS will simply account for our numbers by adding a “bump” to the Nielsen numbers to make up for our being neglected or what. I know that the many thousands of us who did send emails or nuts or what have you to CBS are no more Nielsen worthy today than we were three months ago… Maybe Nielsen will find a way to collect TIVO and Internet viewing into final product numbers.
Meanwhile I’ll watch on TV… when I might be distracted or doing something else… and again online, when I can find the time I need to focus on the show I want to enjoy… :D
Oh… and Brad Beyer’s character is Stanley Richmond, not Stanley Richard… :D
Corrected, thanks!
Here’s an idea for advertisers: as DVRs become more prevalent, have your commercial just sit there with your name for the 30 seconds. As DVR users fast forward through the commercial, your name will sit there for a short time, easily readable by the DVR crowd. You can have audio going for the real-time viewers. Just a passing thought, I’m sure there are tweaks to make it better….
I don’t know if it’s my Tivo that hurt them as much as the 2+ months they took the show off the air. By the time it came back, I had trouble remembering what had happened. It dampened my desire to see the end. Although I’m happy to see the show back, I’m bugged that they felt the need to pull it for two months to begin with. I wonder how many viewers they lost just because of that.
Perhaps if the show were “appointment television” for me like The Sopranos or ’24’, then I would forego the Tivo’ing. Either way though, I still Tivo those shows because of the ability to pause and sometimes I’m not even at home (!).
Perhaps he should also direct his comments toward Nielsen families with DVR’s.